Episode 17: Jason Baldwin: "When I do get angry ..." Episode 17 of the Case Against with Gary Meece

  From "Blood on Black" available on Amazon   "WHEN I GO GET ANGRY IT IS USUALLY NOT A PRETTY SITE."       Though Damien Echols routinely and wrongly has been described as “innocent” or even “exonerated,” Jason Baldwin in many ways has been more effective with his assertions of innocence than the weird and off-putting Echols. The perpetually smiling Baldwin projects a whimsical and slightly goofy image for one supposedly mistreated by the justice system. In many ways unchanged from the skinny little murder defendant who looked as if he should still be drawing race cars and airplanes at the back of a classroom, Baldwin continues to speak without self-consciousness of his simple beliefs in justice, truth and loving your mom. While perpetual poser Echols scowls and sulks in his frequent media portraits, Baldwin today seems positively blithe. Crime novelist Charles Willeford’s description of a heartless young criminal as a “blithe psychopath" sums up many a man lacking a conscience, eager to rob, rape, cheat or kill with never a doubt, qualm or worry. For those who consider Baldwin’s actions on May 5, 1993, “out of character,” consider that his very best, his inseparable friend was a violent, mentally ill dabbler in the occult who went to great lengths to project an image of foreboding evil.     In a hearing in 2009, Samuel Joseph Dwyer, a neighbor and playmate of the Baldwin brothers at Lakeshore in 1993, described how Jason began to adopt Echols’ manner of dress and distinctive way of speaking after they began hanging out together. Even so, Dwyer carefully characterized Baldwin as someone who was not a follower, but as one who kept his own counsel. Jason, like the disturbed Echols and the thuggish Misskelley, already had had several brushes with the law prior to his arrest for murder. Also in counterpoint to his reputation as a mild-mannered animal lover with an artistic soul were several incidents of violent acting- out. There were troubling incidents. On June 5, 1987, the Baldwin/Grinnell clan was living in a rundown sec- tion of rural Shelby County when someone set fire to a bedroom with a lighter. Setting fires is one of the earliest and surest signs of budding criminal psychopathology. Exactly six years later, on June 5, 1993, in the first shock of the arrests,  Jason’s paternal grandmother, Jessie Mae Baldwin of Sheridan, Ark., expressed doubts about his innocence to the Commercial Appeal.  She said, “I thought in my own mind when those boys were killed that my grandson is sorta superstitious about that devil stuff. He was always catching lizards and snakes, something was going on in that child’s mind.” Years later, Baldwin testified he first was placed on probation when he was 11. As juvenile records are closed and Baldwin has been stingy with details, the facts surrounding this encounter with the law are not clear. In a letter to girlfriend Heather Cliett written from lockup, Baldwin wrote: “I have never been in jail before, except for once and I was only there for one hour that was nothing.” Most 16-year-olds would count a trip to jail as a life-defining moment, but for Baldwin getting into trouble was “nothing” and going to jail re- ally didn’t count as going to jail. His thinking lacked proportion and betrayed a pervading sense of unfairness, hence his complaint that “they keep me locked up in my cell for 24 hours a day. while the other prisoners get to get out of their cells all day long to play games, eat steaks, and all kinds of stuff.” He made it sound as if he was not allowed to go to summer camp. At age 12, Jason, his brother Matt and several other boys broke into a building and went on a destructive spree vandalizing the antique cars stored inside. They broke out the windows on several autos and wrecked the place. They were caught jumping on the cars by two men who called the police. The boys were charged with breaking and entering and criminal mischief. The incident often has been framed as harmles